It’s just about good old mid-Autumn Festival again, and I’ve got auspicion on my mind. If you live anywhere north of 178, there’s a lot of banging on drums, clashy cymbals and atonal singing. Perfect. There are fake hundred-dollar bills just lying in the gutter, which have me reflexively reaching, pulse racing, every single time. You’ll also get an eyeful of a lot of topless guys wearing yellow satin lion legs, and that’s never a bad thing.
I’m not Chinese per se, but I yearn to fit in. To make sure our little one-rabbit gang of three embraces the harvest spirit in our ‘hood, I’ve fashioned corn-husk leggings and a little cornucopia hat for The Bunster. He’s not thrilled, but he gets where I’m coming from.
Instead of his phone torch, I make the Man of the House carry a tulip lantern on a stick to take out the garbage every night. Happily I don’t have much to do to go Sino because I got both sleeves and full back ink depicting the Manchu Conquest with specific focus on the Seven Grievances Declaration of 1618. So I just sit on the balcony a lot with my shirt off and hope that someone notices.
Best of all there’s plenty of mooncakes for breakfast. Gee whiz, you can get a terrific mooncake in CharmingVille. Unlike the olden days, when you could only buy imported ones mass produced in the notorious pastry sweatshops of Guangdong, you can now get top quality ones crafted right here in our five-star kitchens.
So on Tuesday I put pants on and went to Aeon to buy a laundry hamper and came out empty handed in the hamper department, but with two cactuses, a Pikachu phone charger and a stent–load of exotically packaged pig fat and sugar. I bought three.
Holy crap. You’d think they were made from the actual moon given how much they cost. I spent my whole month’s tuktuk allowance. But the boxes have jade rabbits on them, and you may know I’m partial to rabbits, regardless of their creed. Plus there’s a surprise inside, like an egg or a nut or some smokey bacon, which I categorically do not recommend.
My two Chinese friends – I say that, but technically one’s Malaysian and the other one’s from Hoboken, but needs must – turned up to my work and we ate those lunar lumps together, prising thick gobbets of sesame and lotus paste off the rooves of our mouths with pots and pots of peppermint tea.
For some extra authenticity I made them talk Chinese – it could have been anything for all I know, but it sounded really real – and we watched a couple of episodes of Monkey for a bit. But you don’t have to be a pretend Chinese person or from NooJoizy to love a dirty big box of mooncakes. Just this last week in Chengdu, a wily panda faked a bun in the oven so she could get round–the-clock pats, climate control and a daily bushel of lotus-stuffed delights. And she’s not the only ursine hustler around. Pandas, in general, are canny buggers.
Ding Dong and Bang Bang shamelessly wangled a 10-year sex-for-rent programme at an Australian zoo, gouging 10 million smackers from witless taxpayers to fund a decade walking slowly, eating shitloads of free stuff, fucking like animals and baring their big round arses to hordes of Chinese tourists and exchange students from Singapore – the only people who can afford to pay the extortionate entrance fee.
Those furry tricksters also cut a sweet deal on merch spin-offs, which included a line of ‘Panda-Sutra’ stubby holders and an exercise video. You can take the panda out of the country, etc, etc.
Duotone bear or not, everyone has a secret sweet tooth, and with the Hubster’s birthday just days away, I’ve been considering all manner of cakery to top with candles and embarrass him with in a public place. Some kind of croquembouche-style mooncake stack might be novel, but given the breathtaking pricetags it would mean I can’t buy him the cow he’s been after.
Certainly, a panda is out of the question.